Tony Walsh — A Girl, Like, Y'Know

Talked to my sister Katie the other day and, after chatting about Mario Kart 8, after reminiscing about how I used to thrash her on the N64 (please accept that unquestioningly), she asked me about the fruit over here. Well, we ended up touching on the palm trees, and I just happened to suggest she have a look at my last blog post. 

She went quiet. Very quiet. Now this could mean one of two things. Either she’s not looked at it and feels guilty or she has looked at it and thought it was crap. I went with the latter, saying, “don’t worry, it’s not another one of them boring poem posts,” and she laughed a give-away laugh. I know my sister, but I sometimes forget that the kind of geeky-indulgence poet fanboys like to wallow in is definitely a big turn-off for most. 

So this one’s for you Kay, I won’t be squelching about in any high-falutin' textual analysisisis just trying to put down why I like this poem so much. Better mention though, if I mention the word ‘poem’ I mean the video, the performance and not pg. 37 in SEX & LOVE & ROCK&ROLL (Burning Eye Books, 2013), which is reproduced at the bottom of the post. 

If you’ve watched the poem already then you’ve heard Tony’s introduction. It’s “in the words of a young girl” who “finds herself with a baby” and, moreover, “she hasn’t got fancy words” to tell her story. He goes on to say that, “this poem tries to take its power … from her inarticulacy and her limited vocab.” We know where we stand then and are able to orientate ourselves early for this sadly all too familiar story.

After the intro we get a brief glance down, and then we’re straight in. (People who perform from memory get nowhere near enough credit for doing it and the delivery here is great, fluid and natural.) So we’re led through the first two or three stanzas with a smile, with gestures. And it really comes across, we’re nodding along with it, inadvertently smiling along with the “pissed,” and “kissed,” and “round the back.” We’re even still smiling when we get to the “fuckin’ hell,” but that soon starts to fade. The insistent and level-eyed delivery starts to feel more reproachful and our stupid grin sinks. 

As we follow into the complications of the “area’s crap” and “loads of stuff,” we start to sense something bad coming. The voice, that seemed so self-confident, starts to collapse in on itself. What follows, the almost impossible confession of violence, which starts with “felt a bit — shit,” and leads into “hits” and “kicked” is represented on the page (see below) by a couple of dashes and repeated letters. What else can you do? To get to the emotion represented in the performance on the page you’d have to wedge a good bit of blank space between the lines and stretch out the stuttered letters over the margin. 

Well-produced too, good sound quality (bit of a shame about the ambient being loud) and great choice of location. Can’t imagine a poem like this being read out to you on the street. Seems more intimate, too confessional to be done in front of people. 

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Me crummy Signet edition of Robert Frost’s poems has a quote on the back that enthuses, ‘His poems are people talking!’ I don’t know anyone who talks like a Frost, thank God, but I know people who talk like a Walsh. Well, here’s one person talking, in a voice that is utterly believable and inhabited. Moreover, it’s a voice, handled with sensitivity and sympathy for its perceived inadequacies. What the unforgivingly aspirational among us identify as vulgar stylistic traits, excessive use of repetition, too few fancy words to throw the plebs off, and ready use of—can you believe it—cliché? Yet, in the face of what they’d say, the very limits of expression are used as the means to propel this poem to the heights of something very much like eloquence. 

I’ve a crummy video-game metaphor for it. So there’s Mario in Super Mario Galaxy, right? And occasionally he comes up against an enclosed sheer wall that he just can’t jump. What the expert player (or any average six-year-old) knows to do here is use Mario’s limits to beat the challenge. You jump off the opposing wall onto the other and so on, using your momentum to ricochet to the top. The obstacle becomes the means of progress. 

And this is just what this poem does. Never once stepping outside the bounds of its proscribed realism it ricochets off its limits. The chorus, or refrain, is the perfect example of this, the "like" and the "y'know" that run all the way down the spine of the poem keep turning us around when our attention might otherwise try and escape. This, I reckon, is what makes this poem so absorbing and memorable.

It is also practically inspiring; if this much can be said with so little then it's not only Mr Walsh that can do it. It's not only the people who know more fancy words than you who can be persuasive, who can represent their own interests and arguments, you can do it too. 

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A Girl, Like, Y’Know 

When I met him, and that

I just liked him, and that

There was summat about him, you know

And we was all a bit pissed, like

And we just sort of kissed, like

And ended up round the back, like, you know

And then later, and that

When I found out and that

I was like, ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ like, you know

And me Mam’s like, ‘No way,’ like

But then she’s ok, like

She’s been dead good now, like, you know

I’m like, ‘Are you moving in, like?’

‘To help with this kid, like?’

And he’s like, ‘Whatever,’ you know

So we got our own flat, like

But the area’s crap, like

And we need loads of stuff, like, you know

And then - I had Kyle, like

And now - for a while, like

I’ve felt a bit - shit, like, you know

And he - hits me, and that

And he’s - kicked me, and that

But - I - I - I - love him, and that, like, you know?

And - sometimes - I feel, like

I’ve - ruined me life, like

But then I’m like - ‘What life?’ You know?